Conservatives’ climate change policy is killing Canada’s reputation

Megan Leslie is the NDP MP for Halifax and serves as both Deputy Leader and Environment Critic for Canada’s Official Opposition. She has also held critic portfolios in health, housing, justice and Aboriginal affairs. Before entering politics, Megan worked as a community-based lawyer. As a founder of the Affordable Energy Coalition, she helped jumpstart some of Nova Scotia’s first comprehensive energy-efficiency programs.

If the Harper government has achieved nothing else on the climate change file, it has managed to profoundly lower expectations and savage Canada’s international reputation. Repeatedly, Canada has been singled out for “fossil” awards, which shed light on obstructive behaviour and weakened emission reductions. Instead of shaming this government into honouring its obligations, Conservative MPs applaud wildly when news of another fossil award is mentioned in the House.

From November 26 to December 7, the global community will meet in Doha, Qatar for the 18th Conference of the Parties (COP 18) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Key to this conference will be setting the agenda for the post-Kyoto period, as the Protocol expires at the end of this year. Canada shockingly withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol and abandoned its commitments mere days after COP 17 in Durban.

This withdrawal demonstrates not just a profound lack of leadership; it means Canada has relinquished any chance to help guide international climate policy. Climate change is a global problem; its consequences don’t respect borders. Since scientists started tracking climate change decades ago, our understanding of the system-wide impact that it will have has confirmed that neglecting the need for action would be a massive failure by governments and citizens worldwide.

With the domestic costs of climate change expected to increase to $5 billion per year by 2020, Canadians can’t afford to do nothing.

Yet instead of taking leadership and moving Canada toward the green economy of the future, the Conservatives have reduced Canada’s planned emission reduction targets by 90 per cent, taken credit for provincial action and results and cancelled wildly successful energy efficiency and home retrofit programs. Further, they failed to enact the Clean Air Act passed in 2007, and have twice killed the NDP’s Climate Change Accountability Act that would have established a framework for ambitious, science-based reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

The Conservatives have boasted about their piecemeal plan — a plan that has been internationally criticized for being inefficient and ineffective — yet have failed to implement it, and have continually allowed industry to undermine its potential to achieve reductions. This is simply not good enough, and our global partners are well aware of this.

Canadians are wondering why the Harper government is even going to Doha. What role will they play, or be in a position to play, given their rejection of our global partners last year?

New Democrats have been clear. Canada must take the lead in the fight against climate change and support an international agreement that is fair, ambitious and binding. The Green Climate Fund must be operationalized and funded to help developing countries adapt to and mitigate climate change. The gap between the world’s promised emissions cuts and the actual cuts needed to avoid cataclysmic climate change must be closed and new, legally binding commitments must be made as soon as possible.

New Democrats believe it is our collective ethical responsibility to pass on a healthy planet to future generations. We’ll continue to fight to make that happen.

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Megan Leslie is NDP MP for Halifax and serves as both Deputy Leader and Environment Critic for Canada’s Official Opposition. She has also held critic portfolios in health, housing, justice and Aboriginal affairs. Before entering politics, Megan worked as a community-based lawyer. As a founder of the Affordable Energy Coalition, she helped jumpstart some of Nova Scotia’s first comprehensive energy-efficiency programs.